Posted on October 17, 2016 by AdminUN

LINKEDIN AND LABOR RELATIONS

Billy Milton, David Scholl, Bruce Waxman, Mike Herlihy, and a few more folks acquired a lifetime of LR/ER/HR experience in the federal government. They were in government from the earliest days of the labor law in the late 70’s, litigated some of the major precedent making cases that we still rely on today and picked up a bundle of common sense about how to operate in a collective bargaining arena. For example, Billy Milton, known more formally as William Milton, started as a Custom Inspector in Treasury, worked on the staff of two national unions, and ultimately served as the Chief Human Capital Officer at the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture before retiring. We mention them only to bring out that there is a lot of tested LR/ER/HR talent among the retired federal employees and wit just a little bit or work on sources like LindedIn you can find and contact them.

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Posted on October 6, 2016 by AdminUN

WHY DO UNIONS REOPEN NEGOTIATIONS SO OFTEN?

It is not unusual for a union to propose as part of reopening and modifying a master or term agreement that it be allowed to reopen certain articles for another round of negotiations at pre-set times during the life of the new master agreement. For example, the new term contract could have a three year term along with a right for the union to reopen five articles after 18 months and to engage in supplemental bargaining on a handful of only-partially-resolved issues during the first year of the new term contract. Why do they do this given it takes time away from other things they could be doing and can even cost the union some significant travel and per diem money? (Hint: Creating a chance to improve the conditions of employment in those areas is barely half the reason, if that.) Continue reading →

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Posted on September 30, 2016 by AdminUN

DON’T LIKE THE FLRA DECISION? JUST SAY “NO F….ING WAY!”

Fortunately for the effectiveness of the system, most losing parties accept an FLRA decision on exceptions to an arbitration award as final and implement the remedy. However, what can a party do when it still does not agree that it got a fair hearing, that the law was properly applied, or that through its own fault it missed a major argument? For example, suppose an arbitrator ruled against an agency on a grievance claiming a violation of government-wide regulation and/or statute and then not only ordered the agency to grant gobs of back pay but also change the way it administers a large system, such as the leave approval one. Continue reading →

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Posted on September 28, 2016 by AdminUN

IS ALL FAIR IN LOVE, WAR AND BARGAINING?       

As Congress tightens the budgetary noose around the Executive Branch of government, union negotiators need to prepare for tougher arguments from management when the union proposes an agency fund its institutional travel and per diem costs, office space needs, official time desires, attorney fee requests, etc. Looking down the road we see these bargaining conversations getting into very sensitive territory for the union. For example, Continue reading →

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Posted on September 26, 2016 by AdminUN

CONGRATS TO NATCA ON COLLABORATION

A big tip of our hat to NATCA for developing several videos explaining how its collaboration with the FFA works.   If you agency is struggling with the concept, these are a good source of ideas.

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Posted on September 26, 2016 by AdminUN

DO YOU USE FEDSMILL THESE 5 WAY?

While we welcome those of you who just read our postings, we hope that most of you are squeezing everything out of Fedsmill.com that you can to build a strong labor-management process. Here are just five ways you could use our blog no matter which side of the bargaining table you sit on. Continue reading →

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Posted on September 23, 2016 by AdminUN

WE DO NOT ADVISE DOING THIS, BUT …

Most union reps know that when a manager orders an employee to do something the employee had better do it no matter how wrong the order is.  There is a collective bargaining principal called, “Work now, grieve later.” That strongly suggests most arbitrators will punish an employee for not complying when s/he could have filed a grievance and gotten the situation corrected and/or remedied. Even though there are some recognized exceptions to that principal, such as a risk of imminent physical harm to someone, employees take a risk when they count on them.  Nonetheless, it happens and if you are representing an employee who did this (or you are the HR specialist advising the manager what to do) there is an old FLRA case where it upheld the employee’s right to refuse to perform uncompensated work that you should read over.  Here is how FLRA largely told the story quoting frequently from the arbitration decision. Continue reading →

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Posted on September 23, 2016 by AdminUN

WHAT IF A CO-WORKER GETS YOU FIRED?

Aside from hopefully momentary thoughts of physical revenge in the extreme, the average person may not realize that a childhood fable about a cat and chestnuts figures prominently in the answer. Have you heard of “Cat’s Paw” cases? We hope so because we have written about them before, e.g., “Another ‘Cat’s Paw’ Discrimination Victory.” But if you are new to our group of readers or have the memory retention problems like we have, then a brand new case out of the Court of Appeals is a great refresher and a breath of fresh air that expands an employee’s protection under the “Cat’s Paw” theory. Continue reading →

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Posted on September 23, 2016 by AdminUN

WHEN EMPLOYEES HAVE SEIZURES

Whether a fed’s job involves driving, operating equipment or enforcing the law, seizures create serious, if not life-threatening, risks for the employee, co-workers, employer and public. So, what choice does an employer have when an employee informs it that s/he is having seizures and would like to be moved to a different position indefinitely until s/he can get them under control or given a leave of absence until they are controllable. Assume the employee is newly hired, still in a probationary period, and not yet eligible for FMLA leave. Continue reading →

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Posted on September 22, 2016 by AdminUN

TEST YOURSELF: HOURS OF WORK {Revised}

In this fictional scenario the employees regularly work from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. processing on-line applications for federal benefits. Each night the headquarters computer center downloads an inventory of cases to each employee’s on-line inventory, employees work those cases the next day, and return for reassignment any unworked cases. At times, the employees are authorized overtime to catch up with the inventory. This particular week, however, something happened at the computer center that prevented it from downloading the day’s work until 10 a.m. each day. As soon as that was discovered on Monday, the supervisor changed employees’ shifts from the normal one to 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. By Thursday night the computer center emergency was over, everything was back to normal, and the shift for Friday was 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Can the employees ask for overtime pay? If so, for what hours? And what about those employees who had to take leave because they could not stay past 4:30 p.m.? (For this problem, assume that there is nothing in the collective bargaining agreement entitling employees to overtime in this situation?) Continue reading →

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